Healthy in the wrong way: Mismatching of marketers’ food claim use and consumers’ preferences in the United States but not France

Abstract

Health claims on food packaging can focus on the presence of good (vs. the absence of bad) and the preservation of nature (vs. nutritional improvements). We study the frequency of use of four resulting types of claims ("clean," "whole," "diet," and "enriched") in three categories over the past ten years and contrast it with the preferences and associations of American and French consumers. Focusing on breakfast cereals, we find a strong match in France but a mismatch in the United States, where marketers' claim use is negatively correlated with consumers' claim preferences. The mismatch arises from the underuse of presence-focused and nutrition-based "enriched" claims (e.g., "added calcium") and the overuse of absence-focused and nutrition-based "diet" claims (e.g., "low fat"). The mismatch is more pronounced among privately-owned companies than among public companies, which tend to claim that their products are healthy in the way that consumers prefer.

Bring it on! Package shape signaling dominant male body promotes healthy food consumption for male consumers

“…Women typically engage more in health and beauty‐boosting consumption than men, partly driven by the mate attraction motive. However, encouraging male consumers to engage more in healthy eating has proven a formidable challenge worldwide (Chandon & Cadario, 2022). Our findings suggest that through anthropomorphic package design that signals an ideal male body, marketers may be able to attract male (vs. female) consumers' attention.…”

“…Although the two broad literature streams, namely (1) the effect of product package on food healthiness (Chandon & Cadario, 2022; Koo & Suk, 2016; Togawa et al, 2019; Ye et al, 2020); and (2) product/brand anthropomorphism on consumer response (Romero & Craig, 2017; Schroll, 2022; Sharma & Rahman, 2022; Velasco et al, 2021; Wang et al, 2022) have been both studied extensively, yet little attention has been paid on how anthropomorphizing the package could bias consumers' food healthiness perception and subsequent consumption. Resonating with a pioneering investigation that packages that mimic the human body in terms of slimness can affect consumers' healthy food evaluations (Yarar et al, 2019), our work further contributes to this burgeoning literature stream by elucidating the influential role of package dominance on healthy food consumption.…”

“…Growing body of works have shown that anthropomorphizing the actual product (Schroll, 2022; Wang et al, 2022), brand (Sharma & Rahman, 2022), or other food‐related cues (e.g., animal) (Kim & Yoon, 2021) can bias consumer expectation of food healthiness and their subsequent behavior. Despite extensive research on the relationship between product package and food healthiness (Chandon & Cadario, 2022; Fenko et al, 2016; Mai et al, 2016; Ye et al, 2020) and between anthropomorphic design and food healthiness as discussed, surprisingly few studies have investigated the effects of anthropomorphic package on food healthiness and choice. Although the packaging is also considered a part of the product, food, and its packaging are distinct concepts.…”

Uncovering the Effect of European Policy-Making Initiatives in Addressing Nutrition-Related Issues: A Systematic Literature Review and Bibliometric Analysis on Front-of-Pack Labels

“…In the meanwhile, the benefits of front-of-pack labels have also been outlined in Southeast Asia [148], Ireland, the US [149,150], Poland [151], Portugal [2] and Mexico [152].…”